cities: The Americas 187 ies remained common in many areas Even where agriculture bore an early influence, large cities failed to evolve, although this does not indicate that complex societies did not exist or that settlements with urban characteristics did not develop Material evidence remains scarce and data largely insufficient, but a number of North American sites merit attention By size and complexity the site of Snaketown is not properly a city, but it does show advanced urban characteristics Southeast of modern Phoenix, Arizona, and a capital city of the Hohokam culture, Snaketown represents about 700 years of continuous occupation, with its decline occurring around 1200 The site comprised more than 30 acres, with an estimated total of perhaps 5,000 houses, which were built and rebuilt on the ruins of earlier ones Special architectural features included earthen pyramids, the largest of which was 95 by 70 feet at the base and 10 feet high, with a perishable structure at the top; crude replicas of the ball courts of Central America, with a playing field 185 feet long and 60 feet wide; and irrigation ditches that were expanded over the centuries, with canals eventually reaching over 30 feet in width and 10 miles in length A Mexican influence is revealed in the frequent use of the snake motif on art objects While Pueblo Bonito (920–1085), in Chaco Canyon, in modern New Mexico, and Mesa Verde (1100–1275), in southwestern Colorado, are most accurately called villages or towns, as proto-urban sites they provide architectural examples that resonate with elements considered “citylike” in modern times Initial settlement at both sites occurred as early as 350 c.e and is attributed to the Anasazi culture Using only the immediately available materials—stone, earth, and wood—the Anasazi built unit structures with adjoining walls called pueblos that often appear in striking harmony with their physical environments As populations grew, the Anasazi added second stories to their pueblos, reserving many interior rooms for storage, thus forming what are sometimes informally referred to as the first apartment buildings Mesa Verde is most famous for its dramatic setting, with its apartment-like structures and kivas, or religious ceremonial structures, set into a deep niche on the underside of a canyon wall By the time the Anasazi flourished, between 1100 and 1300, the “great houses”—highly integrated assemblages of rooms, kivas, plazas, towers, and terraces—of Chaco Canyon rose as comprehensively planned structures, each incorporating ceremonial, religious, defensive, economic, and political functions into a single, walled development Like Mesa Verde, these developments exhibited proto-urban characteristics, the most prominent of which were, again, the stacked units, which reached as high as four stories at Pueblo Bonito Farther east, the floodplain of the Mississippi River, a wide and well-defined natural area of easily cultivated soils and marshy lakes, is referred to as the American Bottom Usually thought of as a “cult center” of the late Mississippian culture, the major temple site of Cahokia (fl 900–1100), to the east of Mississippi River at modern St Louis, Missouri, is a cluster of groupings of ceremonial mounds and temples covering several square miles The Mississippian culture period was characterized by the emergence of sedentary societies based on maize agriculture, with ranked or layered social orders governed by leadership believed to have been semidivine Mississippian settlements were formally organized around plazas flanked by earthen mounds surmounted by temples, council houses, or chiefly residences As broadly defined to include nearby mound groups, Cahokia stretches over 10 miles from the banks of the Mississippi River eastward The Cahokia site proper occupied an area of to square miles, with more than 100 mounds The site’s innermost sanctum, a ceremonial and residential center, comprised the most substantial temple mounds and was surrounded by a palisade of vertical logs, with defensive towers set at intervals (The largest temple mound, referred to as Monk’s Mound, after a Trappist community that lived there from 1809 to 1813, is 104 feet tall, covers 16 acres, and contains 22 million cubic feet of earth.) Archaeologists have divided the history of Cahokia into a series of phases, as defined by the diagnostic pottery type, distinctive architecture, level of sociopolitical integration, and relationships to neighboring peoples; the phases are called Lohman, Stirling, Moorehead, Sand Prairie, and Oneota Cahokia was occupied in various forms until about 1650, but the site ceased to be a major city at least 300 years before the French arrived in the mid-eighteenth century Some scholars estimate that at its height as many as 40,000 persons lived in greater Cahokia Mesoamerican Urbanism Regarding Mesoamerican urban, social, and cultural development, the village farming community was the primary template during the Early Preclassic (ca 1800–ca 1200 b.c.e.) In some regions, especially southern Mesoamerica, the temple center was a contemporaneous development, with major religious architecture being built during this period The Middle Preclassic (ca 1200–ca 400 b.c.e.) and Late Preclassic (ca 400 b.c.e.–ca 150 c.e.) witnessed population increases and the rise of ceremonial centers; in nearly all areas such centers were found In the lowland forest territory of modern Guatemala, on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, and in the Veracruz-Tabasco region of Gulf Coast Mexico, temple centers grew in size, complexity, and importance as politico-religious nuclei of scattered village and hamlet life The emerging trend, with energy, population, and organization being drawn inward toward a center, precipitated civic devel-